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Most fonts are licensed when needed, selected specifically for the job at hand. But when my (less font-addicted) friends are seeking versatile, workhorse typefaces for future use, I send them this list.

Retailers

Fontstand — This new platform for testing and renting desktop fonts includes a highly selective group of high quality foundries. There are no webfonts available through Fontstand Update (Sep 2016): the platform now offers hosted webfonts for most of its catalog.

Type Network – A retail collaboration created in 2016 by Font Bureau designers, several of which now offer their fonts through their own foundry labels within the Type Network “mall”, each with their own storefront. The group of foundries is gradually expanding beyond the Font Bureau members, and all the fonts are of a professional caliber.

MyFonts and Fontspring — Because these are retailers with liberal acceptance policies, the quality of type available at these sites varies widely. MyFonts is by far the largest and longest-running online font retailer, so it has a much larger selection and better browsing and sampling; but Fontspring is an up-and-coming challenger that offers foundries a much higher percentage of sales revenue. As an entry point into their vast collections, here are my personal recommendations at Fontspring and MyFonts.

FontShop — The foundries represented at FontShop are more carefully curated, but there is still dreck through which to wade. Here are my favorites as a starting point. The Underused list also features some of the best stuff.

Of course, there are dozens of reputable outfits that make and sell good fonts. It’s almost irresistible to list every little foundry I love, but most of them are available via one of these outlets and a set of links longer than the one above is often more overwhelming than useful. Think of this list as a shopper’s starting point for building a lasting typographic toolset. These sites offer most of the best fonts available, and — crucially — present them well, too.

The focus here is on downloadable desktop fonts for print use, but most of these shops offer webfonts as well, either through a hosted service or as a self-hosted download. Noted next to each provider is the kind of webfont licensing they offer. Other webfont providers include Typekit, Webtype, Fontdeck, and Fonts.com. MyFonts and FontShop also offer downloadable, self-hosted webfonts.

Speaking of typeface recommendations, our very own Typographica.org reviews are also a good introduction to a few of the best new typefaces. After an unforgivable two-year hiatus, we’re wrapping up the 2011 edition now.

15 Comments

The goal of this list is to be as concise as possible. Like many other foundries that aren’t listed, Underware and TypeTogether are both top-notch with only good stuff in their libraries, but because their fonts are available at FontShop, MyFonts, and Village (Underware), they don’t get a place on this shortlist. If they offered something extraordinary and exclusive on their sites I would consider mentioning them separately. Meanwhile, you’ll find many of their typefaces are represented in my favorites on MyFonts.

YouWorkForThem offers many of the same fonts available at MyFonts. Those that they offer exclusively are not good enough to warrant a special mention. The YWFT site itself is aesthetically appealing to many designers, and its functionality is improving, but MyFonts still offers much more information and faster, more flexible sampling — not to mention thousands more fonts of a professional-level quality.

You should definitely check out http://www.fontspring.com. They are pretty new but they have grown a lot. Their selection is pretty complete, but the real winner is they keep things simple. Licensing is one affordable fee without all the requirements. I have also found their web font hinting to be superior to some of the other distributors.

I’d love to hear what fonts and what distributors you’ve tried. The hinting is going to vary quite a bit at Fontspring as there is no single production flow for every font. Some are probably quite good, as they offer some of the same fonts available at higher end retailers, but many are very poor.

House Industries just launched a new website and finally sell webfonts, which means every source in the main list now offers web licensing without the need to email or call.

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